Today we’d like to take you through one of our newest additions to our integrations for receiving StatusCake alerts. Whilst being a relatively new service, Discord has already made a big impact and already has a user-base of over 90 million individuals world wide.

There are some big advantages to using discord as your alerting platform with StatusCake. First of all it’s very easy to set up the server that will receive the messages in comparison to similar services, it’s a task that can be easily achieved by the most basic users in a very short period of time. What’s more it’s even easier to set up this integration on our end, all you will need is your “Discord Webhook URL”

Discord is also available across all mobile and desktop platforms, so you can get alerts to your phone and computer no matter which brands or operating systems you go with. As well as that there’s a functional browser version of the app for when you need quick access from an unfamiliar device. There’s support for multiple staff members and the separation/distribution of alerts into different channels within your discord room too – giving you the power to configure this to fit your needs precisely.

All this is available for free after a simple sign up over at discordapp.com , once you are done you just need to pop over to our integrations page to start getting the alerts into your own Discord room.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been looking at feature requests on our Page Speed monitoring feature, and today we’ve released the next phase which introduces a wide range of improvement and new functionality.

Tracking Options

One of the most frequent requests we’ve had is the giving our customers the ability to ensure that Page Speed testing does not affect users’ analytics stats.

To address this we’ve added both the ability to not load code from common trackers like Google analytics by default, and also a function which will include a DNT (Do not Track) header with all outgoing requests, meaning users will no longer need to add custom filters within their analytics accounts in order to exclude this traffic.

Data Connection Simulation/Throttling

Another big request was that users would like to be able to define the connection type that’s used for the Page Speed monitoring. We now allow you to select one of the following options in-app for your Page Speed tests, and the normal speeds are still available as the default option:

4G

3G FAST (AKA 3.5G)

3G SLOW

EDGE(AKA 2G)

GPRS

Custom Viewport Sizes

Next we’ve added the ability to set the screen resolution and view type for the Page Speed test, this allows you to simulate tests from different devices/screen sizes. Both desktop and mobile variants are offered, and you can see the current options below:

Custom User Agent

You can now set a custom user agent which can be useful for accessing pages with certain restrictions, and also if for any other reason you’d prefer not to use our default user agent: StatusCake_Pagespeed_Indev

Custom Headers

Our final update to the Page Speed monitoring feature is the ability to send custom headers with the test, again this will enable testing on sites where this was not previously possible. You can add as many headers as you like to be sent with the test, one per line.

Today we’d like to introduce two great new features available on the StatusCake monitoring platform, we’ve received a lot of requests recently for the new functionality these will offer. You can read more about exactly what the new additions enable you to do below!

Basic Test Editor

Our new basic test editor allows you to set up HTTP type tests much faster than you’d usually be able to using our standard test creation form. When creating a basic test you will only need to select the URL to be tested, check rate and testing location, you can also optionally assign contact groups and tags.

From the dashboard you can now use the basic test editor at any time using the new buttons at the top, you’ll also have the option to create an “Advanced test” using our standard form, which will allow you to access the more complex configurations such as string match, custom headers and POST data. When creating a basic test you can switch to the advanced setup form at any time by clicking the link at the very top of the form.

When using the basic test editor you will be given the status of the website after typing the URL in a box to the left of the page, so you can be sure that the settings you have added are correct before saving. We’ve also simplified the location selection part, you now have the ability to select a continent from where you would like testing to occur, and locations will be assigned from that continent only. There’s the option as well to select “Random” and have the tests come from our locations around the globe with no restrictions.

CSV format export for test details

We’ve added the ability to export your test settings as a CSV file from the main uptime test dashboard. At the top of the page you’ll now see a button labelled “Export Settings” which can be clicked to action the download for all tests straight away.

The file downloaded will have semi-colon separated values, for a full reference of the details that the file will contain please check here.

Today we’ve made some changes to our Domain and SSL features to make your monitoring set ups more effective, and cover a wider range of use-cases.

SSL Monitoring Updates

Hostname field added to SSL

You can now add a custom hostname to the settings of your SSL test. This is very handy in cases where you need to test with a unique hostname or a specific IP, which is great for bypassing a proxy or dealing with the presence of a load balancer. Existing tests will need to be updated and this setting enabled in order to take advantage of this feature.

User Agent added to SSL

We’ve also added the ability to define a custom user agent for the SSL tests. You can set this to whatever you want for development or security purposes, if you do choose to leave this blank then our default StatusCake user agent will be used.

API support for this and the hostname function will be coming soon.

Domain Monitoring Updates

New TLD’s added to our list of supported Domains

We now have full support for two new TLD’s :

.live

.coop

Adding one of these domains will allow you to get the full set of data including expiry and extended WHOis info. If there’s a domain you’d like to see supported that isn’t just yet – please get in touch with our friendly team via live chat, or send us an email at support@statuscake.com.

In this post we’ll take you through how to list tests from your account, and their detailed settings through the API. There are two functions involved here, first is the function that lists ALL tests on the account with important settings, and second is a more detailed call for a single test. As usual we’ll take you through this process for both of these using PHP, bash, Python and Postman.